Oh no Rosie

[InandOutlander]

I'm so sad to see her go, she was the shining light within the Labour camp.

Interesting snippet from the Charles Moore column on Lord Alli's influence on candidate selection that PP quoted:

Crick’s studies lead him also to endorse a point made at a Labour LGBT+ reception earlier this year by Abdi Duale, a gay member of the party’s NEC, who said that almost a quarter of the new Labour candidates were gay. This follows from the difficulties of an MP’s life I describe above. Although some gay men do have children, most don’t, and therefore have more time for politics and more unencumbered income.

I obviously don't have a problem with gay MPs. I don't even have a problem with there being more gay MPs than the demographics of the general population would suggest. The last sentence above is not wholly wrong.

I start to be slightly sceptical when (a) the numbers become wildly disproportionate to the general population, and (b) the candidates are being drawn from alphabet community activist circles. That's an under-discussed part of what happened to the SNP.

Maybe I'm wrong about that. I hope so. Wes Streeting has been a pleasant surprise, considering what he used to be like in his NUS days. But Wes is not only ambitious but also smart.

Rosie is my MP. Both my DH and I donated to her campaign and even had a sign supporting her in our front garden (if I remember correctly, tellingly the reference to Labour was v small). I gasped when I read her letter of resignation - wow, not mincing her words! My DH is disappointed as he wants a Labour MP. I am delighted because I want Rosie. I am a social democrat in my values but don't feel loyalty to a particular party. I expected Starmer to be boring but competent and not corrupt but feel very disappointed by what has happened since the elections. I care for the same things as RD does (Brexit, women rights - including maternity care, male violence -, HE, medical provisions in East Kent etc) and hope she can speak more freely now.

I don't think she stood in the recent election under false pretences. Her issues with the labour party, and with Starmer, who consistently refused not only to support her, but even to speak to her for two and a half years, are clear and would have been clear to her constituents. If they were paying attention, that is.

She is a conviction labour politician. If she only wanted to secure £93K a year, there were easier ways to do it. She clearly believes in what she thinks labour should stand for. Has faith in what the LP should be - and she still has this faith, according to her letter. Eventually, a last straw will happen.

The point about last straws is that there are a whole bunch of straws beforehand, and Rosie Duffield has not been shy about talking about them. To say that she shouldn't have stood in view of her misgivings is to misunderstand both her and politics. She was elected as a representative of her constituents, not a delegate. She has a duty to use her own judgement and take the decisions she thinks best in her position as a representative. She has done exactly that.

Steve Reed is my MP, and I didn't vote for him, even though he was clearly and by far the best candidate standing simply because I don't believe with Rosie Duffield that the LP can ever be on the side of the angels. I think it's a cynical authoritarian bureaucracy, despite some very good people, and that has stopped me voting for them in a general election ever since I first voted in the '70s. But I would have put this disinclination to one side and voted for Duffield, and would have applauded her resignation now. Because I trust her judgement and her courage.

I often agree with you on here. But not on this. I live in Kent and she is a very decent local MP. Despite the barrage of criticism that she took from "students" in her constituency who could be nothing other than temporary residents from elsewhere. East Kent is very deprived. The Tory MPs in East Kent are generally not too bad so her getting in as Labour was quite ground breaking. But she has not been supported by Starmer and the Labour leadership for a long time. I wish her well.

And now I will continue reading! So apologies if you apologise later!

If she only wanted to secure £93K a year, there were easier ways to do it.

She said "I was elected as a single mum, a former teaching assistant in receipt of tax credits."

What are those easier ways available to her? Genuine question, from someone who doesn't think it's very easy to get a £93k job plus expenses.

If she only wanted to secure £93K a year, there were easier ways to do it.

Are there? Asking for a friend 😬

It would have been easier to crawl up Starmer's arse.

I refer you to myreply to @noblegiraffe .

I have read this thread with great interest, am fipflopping as I read and find noblegiraffe to be not unpersuasive on this.

It reminds me of psychological research that says we 'gut feel' a position and then rationalise that response. I think this is true of many posters: RD has been a legend (I would agree) therefore she should not need to call a by-election.

I felt she has leant too heavily in her letter on the corruption stories (which are 'new') to justify having stood as a Labour MP so recently. Whilst I am horrified by the Alli stuff and saddened by just how unexceptional the Labour lot are in their trough-snouting, her letter feels disingenuous given what we know about her major disagreements with /absuse by Labour. So I have sympathy with Noble's position. If her position is supported by the good people of Canterbury, she'll be an excellent, unfettered Independent.

On the other hand, this may backfire and not forward her ability to do the good she wants to. So morals over pragmatism?... hmmm.

Remember Lord Alli, a Stonewall Champion, seconded a member of his staff to help with MP selection….

And then I wondered why, when she clearly intended on quitting the Labour Party, she didn't do it before the election.

And then I realised that she didn't want to risk her job. Self-interest over principles. Just like she had been moralising about in her letter.

Agree completely. I'd be pissed off if I were one of her constituents.

I voted Tory. Because My MP (also Kent) was prepared to have an intelligent and long lasting door step conversation about the issues facing women if men (however they identify) were able to access female only spaces. No other candidate was prepared to have that conversation. I am a single issue voter. My MP is looking very dull in the Tory Leadership elections. A shame - he was well informed and well able to argue alternative points of view.

Yes. I don't want to say that the bloke from Lord Alli's office got all his mates on the shortlist, but Labour candidate selection has been a murky business since before I was born.

This. If Rosie was just in it for the money she'd be doing what an awful lot of MPs of all parties do, which is go along with everything the party says and manage the expectations of their constituents as best they can.

As a pp said, Starmer crawling, all hail the leader, fingers in the Alli Pie, would be much more lucrative.

You are a known poster, I can only assume your anger against RD is symptomatic of the fact that it has led to your realisation that KS is not the Messiah and that teaching is going to end up as under funded, under supported and under valued as it has under the Tories.

Really? She has 5 years of her 93k salary. She's 53. If she saves hard or depending what her family circumstances are she might not have to go back to work at all - or she can rejoin Labour when the leadership changes (or defect to the Tories).

I can't see any need at all for her to be "sucking up" to anyone at this point.

Nice work if you can get it.

Or it could be she just thinks it's underhand for a politician to use party funding/machinery to get elected, then resign at the first opportunity?

Next I suppose we'll be hearing that it's entirely normal and above board for the PM to have a sugar daddy because - OMG! - something something Rosie Duffield's MP salary.

What are you talking about?
This is a thread about Rosie Duffield. It is reasonable for posters to share opinions on.....Rosie Duffield.

I suspect we'd be hearing very similar arguments if Jesus Christ Himself were to criticise Keir Sponger.

How much party funding do you think was allocated to Canterbury?

https://x.com/LBC/status/1840348073538576425

"I've always put my constituents first, and that hasn't changed." "Why don't you put that to the test?" "No." Now independent MP
@RosieDuffield1
refuses
@Lewis_Goodall
's suggestion of triggering a by-election after she quit the Labour Party over 'sleaze and nepotism'.

Will she still get the 93k for 5 years even though she resigned?

I've campaigned for an independent before, he did really well for an independent candidate and got......3000 votes.

Party of Women, tiny, no brand recognition managed a few hundred votes in each seat it stood for.

Most people vote Red or Blue in the UK, by standing for Labour Duffield could use the party brand and position to win votes from those who'd vote Labour regardless. She knows that, which is why she didn't resign before the Election.

The amount of direct funding she got, I don't know but I also don't think it matters. If there was a by Election she would lose. She knows it, we all know it.

She's still an MP, so yes.